Various styles of bit breakers are known. Bit breakers are commonly used in the oil and gas industries for connecting and disconnecting the joints between adjacent lengths of pipe and/or a drill bit or other tool. In many cases, each joint is defined by an upper component (e.g., an upper length of pipe) connected removably to a lower component (e.g., a lower length of pipe) by threading. Typically, the upper component is rotated in a clockwise direction to connect it to the lower component (and thereby make the joint) and in a counterclockwise direction to break (or loosen) the joint.
With certain conventional bit breakers, one or more working surfaces are particularly vulnerable to being deformed after repeated use. For example, when a pipe is rotated such that surfaces and/or edges of the flat-bottom grooves in the pipe apply force to the pipe slot working surfaces of a conventional bit breaker, the metal adjacent those working surfaces becomes deformed (e.g., gets compressed and/or swells). The resulting deformation is sometimes referred to as a “mushroom effect.” This type of deformation can eventually render a bit breaker useless. As a result of these and other design limitations, some conventional bit breakers have longevity problems, reliability problems, or both.
It would be desirable to provide a bit breaker that overcomes these disadvantages and/or other limitation of conventional bit breakers.